Toxin found in well water

Published 12:00 am, Saturday, March 18, 2006

RIDGEFIELD - Town officials are seeking state aid to pay for public water hookup after uranium was found in an Acre Lane community well.

"It's not unusual to find uranium in Connecticut," said
First Selectman Rudy Marconi
. "Several locations in Newtown have turned up to have uranium in the water."

Acre Lane is a development built in the 1960s. The community well that is used by 14 houses there tested positive for the presence of uranium.

Christine Bucciero
, who lives in one of those homes, is using bottled water to cook and for her family to drink since the uranium was discovered.

"I can't speak for anybody else, but we are using bottled water," Bucciero said. "We have two young kids and I couldn't take the risk. Maybe if it was just myself, but not with children. If it's harmful for an adult, it could be even more harmful to their little bodies."

"It has been found for no other reasons than natural reasons in the western part of the state," Ginsberg said.

Uranium, at high levels of exposure, can cause kidney damage, Ginsberg said. But those levels have to be excessively high, he said.

"If exposed chronically over months to high levels of uranium, the effects can be irreversible," Ginsberg said. "But the majority of the time the levels found are not that high."

The standard for uranium presence in water is 30 parts per billion. It takes levels 10 to 100 times that figure to cause serious problems, Ginsberg said. He added that people often think radioactive when they hear uranium, but that is not the case.

Marconi is hopeful that state money can be found to hook the Acre Lane development to the Aquarian water line that serves the town. The water line ends only 200 feet from Acre Lane so "a solution is at hand," Marconi said.

But hooking Acre Lane to Aquarian's line could cost between $250,000 and $500,000. It would require 2,400 feet of water line to serve all the houses on the lane.

"The costs rests on the amount of ledge that may be encountered in excavation for the line," Marconi said. "Blasting may be required."

At this time, the state DPH is not requiring that the well be shut down. It is recommending that homes on the line not drink or cook with the water from it.